Inquiry Magazine Archive

Found in everything from space shuttles to dental fillings, composite materials have thoroughly infiltrated modern society. But their potential is still greatly untapped, offering researchers ample opportunity for discovery.

beak-through

A Little Bird Told Them

Our feathered friends could hold the key to providing relief for regions plagued by drought.

Mechanical and aerospace engineering Professor Cheng Luo and Ph.D. candidate Xin Heng have designed a device based on a shorebird’s beak that can accumulate water from fog and dew. They use hinged, non-parallel glass plates that are about 26 centimeters long by 10 centimeters wide to mimic the beak’s shape. This design forces the condensation to the point where the two glass plates meet, producing about four tablespoons of water in a couple of hours. The water is then pumped through a channel, and the process repeated.

“If this method could be mass-produced,” Dr. Luo says, “it could be used anywhere in the world that fog or dew exists.”